


Ataraxia: characterized by freedom from worry, or any other preoccupation, really.

by lyonie17



Category: Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Genre: Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-02
Updated: 2009-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyonie17/pseuds/lyonie17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slevin, Goodkat, Lindsey, and their hotel concierge mull things over. Well, the concierge is answering questions, but I'm sure he's mulling in his heart.</p><p>[Written for Delphinapterus in Yuletide 2008.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ataraxia: characterized by freedom from worry, or any other preoccupation, really.

  
It's not what you'd think. It's simpler. It's even easy, but you have to know how. You have to know who you're hunting, and how they think, and how their friends and enemies think, and what will give you the leverage to make them let you in. Once you're in, you can do anything.

I'd never had time to talk to a girl before. It wasn't part of the job, wasn't part of my responsibilities, just - I had a good life, you know, growing up. Learning to kill people. I'm good at it. I'm young and I have a smart mouth, and people aren't threatened by me, so I can get closer to them. It makes it easier, being able to get inside when I'm on a job. Jobs aren't all about sniper rifles and car bombs. Complete lack of subtlety - that's what those are good for. Sometimes, it's better for a person to fall asleep in their car on the highway. Or in their garage, but that's usually obvious.

I think the moment my life changed was the day I thought I would die. That moment when, instead of tightening his finger, the man who'd driven me away from the racetrack and out of town took off his sunglasses and got back in his car.

I didn't realize till years later that Mr. Goodkat had a plan. I'm not sure what I thought. I knew my parents were dead, and why. That was the third thing he told me, after what to call him, and that I wasn't going home. But I didn't immediately connect the fact that my parents were dead with the training he began the next day. It was routine for him. Routine that, when explained, became a spider's web of observation, surveillance, manipulation, sometimes blackmail, and in the end, the ... end.

***

"You should really play ball, kid."

"Really? You think I'm tall enough?"

"What is your name?"

"Oh yeah, now I remember, Slevin Kelevra."

***

After that moment standing by that hole, that day my life changed, my name wasn't Henry. It was Kid. It served a double purpose, I later came to understand. It made me invisible to outsiders, and untraceable, and it separated me from my life before. Not that my life was so different then, I still hung around a lot, waiting for somebody to remember I was there.

I'd never spent so long away from him before this. This job is different - since so many people here know him, he can only play one part. I have to be the invisible one, the afterthought, the inside man.

He warned me once that I would find a line. A line that I couldn't cross, that might fuck up a job, that could kill me. He told me to watch for it, that if I saw it coming I could work around it.

I don't know what to do now, but she's the line I couldn't cross. I don't know what he wants me to do about it, but I couldn't. I never found the line before, and I don't think I will again.

****************************************

****

"My name is Goodkat. You can call me Mr. Goodkat."

***

He's not a kid anymore. I know that. I knew he wouldn't be, after this job, but we still had to do it, and we had to do it now. It was the right time. Now, if he wants to go nine to five, he won't have this hanging over him. He can start all over, go to school maybe, get with this girl, I suppose. It doesn't really matter what I think anyway. That's not why he's here. That's not why I'm here. There are lines you don't cross, ever. And when they are crossed, you don't let it stand. Something has to happen. He understands that.

Sometimes I wonder if this would have been easier if I'd done it myself, left the kid out of it, or left him in that hole twenty years ago. Certainly would have been less complicated, but I just couldn't see how to do it without an inside man, and the inside man had to be invisible. I'm not invisible. I haven't been invisible in years, really, except to people that don't matter. That wilderness of blue chairs was a refreshing change.

I knew, even before we started this one, that if he was going to be noticed, it would be on this job, and it would change everything. It just happened to be the girl across the hall, instead of the gangs, or the pigs, or the tourist videotaping skylines. Never thought I'd have to break cover to tell him to get rid of a girl, though. I don't even think he'd gotten laid but maybe once before. Certainly never anyone who'd interfere with a job, or track me back to a dead-drop hotel room.

****************************************

****

"You can ask Lindsey. She lives across the hall!"

"Yo, man, I ain't askin' nobody nothin'! Nick, Slevin, Clark Kent, whatever the fuck your name is."

***

One morning, I walked across the hallway of my apartment building to borrow some sugar for my morning coffee from my flaky neighbor Nick. I didn't get the sugar until after my coffee was ruined, but I crashed into the rest of my life. And a free show.

Well, of course it was a good show. I came back for seconds, but it was too early. I came back for a lot of things that morning. I came back for a phone call from nobody. I came back for the towel, again, but no show because he'd gone for a ride with Elvis and Sloe.

***

"Thanks for the sugar, sugar."

***

So that was how it started. Sugar. Then there was a towel, and some guys named Sloe and Elvis, and the Boss, and Slim Hopkins. Slim Hopkins was creepy, but I guess that's hard to avoid when you're dead.

I will never look at my life the same way again. No, I mean exactly that. My life changed that morning because I ran out of sugar. I mean, what if I'd run out of milk? I wouldn't have gone to Nick's, because he's flaky and his milk's always turned. He never remembers to put sugar in his coffee, so I knew he'd have some.

I'd never have known that my neighbor was a loser who got bumped off by a hit-man bent on a revenge scheme worthy of those guys Shakespeare's supposed to have cribbed from, merely to allow his henchman access to the inner circles of the men who'd murdered his family years before. I'd never have known, until a heavy-set fifty year-old with two cats moved in across the hall, that anything was wrong.

***

"What happened to your nose?"

"I was using it to break some guy's fist."

***

Detective work is only partly my milieu, if you want to call it that. I mean, working in a morgue is certainly reconstructive, I spend all that time figuring out what happened and why, so I suppose the mind set is there already. I hadn't really given it much thought, though, until Nick was missing and I was suddenly being flashed while holding Nick's apartment door open.

Completely ignoring the towel for the moment, I was very proud of myself that first day, before I realized what I was up against. I'd pulled out the stops for this little domestic mystery, I thought. Columbo, I mean, who opens with Columbo? Poirot, maybe, or a little Encyclopedia Brown, just to ease into it. But really, I can't be held responsible for starting with my A game. I was faced with a towel, a peanut butter sandwich, and a broken nose.

***

"You mean this isn't the first time a crime lord asked you to kill the gay son of a rival gangster to pay off a debt that belongs to a friend whose place you're staying in as a result of losing your job, your apartment, and finding your girlfriend in bed with another guy?"

***

Of course, after dinner with the Israelis, and the toilet interlude with the pig, the only way that evening could have ended was exactly where it did. Scotland forever. It's true, though, the best villain is the one whose face you never see.

I swear that coffee the next morning was the best I had in my life. He never did tell me which shop it was from, but I have to say, waking up to argyle is not my favorite. Also, in case the question should ever arise, bullet proof vests are modern-day torture devices. They're too tight, they bind, and you end up with a bruise for weeks. At least my vest was cushioned with the packets. Mostly.

As it turned out, even though we thought he might be there to take me out, really, Mr. Goodkat had three tickets for an island paradise. He seemed a little tense when we first got on the plane, but he loosened up, and even seemed to enjoy hearing about the other side of the caper. I called it a caper, telling the story, and he laughed at me. Apparently, a caper is when you run a scheme to rob someone of large amounts of money. A revenge scheme is a vendetta, but what I'd walked into when I went to get sugar from Nick was, in point of fact, a Kansas City Shuffle. I told him I thought that was the name of a song, and he said it didn't matter, that's still what he and the kid had been running. He was still chuckling, though.

***

"Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in Monte Carlo, and came in third. That's a story."

****************************************

****

We've seen them before, of course. Many of our clients choose to visit us each year as part of their holiday celebration, or for the celebration of a family anniversary. Mr. Kelevra and his son had never brought a guest before, and we were glad to meet the future Mrs. Kelevra.

Of course I couldn't speculate on the sleeping arrangements in their suite, we pride ourselves on our confidentiality and guard our clients' privacy carefully. I'm afraid I just cannot answer the question at all.

Well, I don't know anything personally, perhaps the maid assigned to their room would be able to tell you more, but they've always been exemplary guests, and the young lady seemed to brighten their stay considerably. Father and son escorted her to different sights around the island, and they ate together and then went out every night. I believe they generally went dancing, although one evening, I myself met them on the beach as they were walking back to the hotel. They appeared to have been swimming, and were walking arm-in-arm-in-arm, talking quietly. The younger Mr. Kelevra nodded to me as we passed each other, and I heard his father speak quietly before the young lady began to laugh.

Why on earth would I have looked to see where they went after that? It was none of my business, and if they needed anything, my night manager is extremely competent.

I can tell you that all three were present the next morning for breakfast, as they each placed a breakfast order with room service. Their choices are a matter of record.

***

"That's all there is to it."

"Is that all there is to it?"

"Yup ... That's all there is to it."


End file.
